Influencer Marketing Doesn’t Need to Break the Bank

There are a lot of different types of marketing that you can do both online and offline. One type of marketing that a lot of small business owners think is out of their reach is influencer marketing. You know about this type of marketing already. A good example of this type of marketing is when a company hires an actor or well-known personality to promote their products on a TV commercial.

Well, guess what, because of YouTube.com, influencer marketing is not out of your reach. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small mom and pop shop or a big business you can use influencer marketing to your advantage. In fact, if you’re a small business, with one owner, and no employees, influencer marketing can work well for you if you choose the right influencers.

Know Your Audience

If you don’t know who your audience is it will be difficult to choose the right type of influencer to help promote your brand, service, or product. You may need to conduct some research to get this right if you’ve not started yet, but if you have started try polling your audience so that you can get to know them better. Also, use Google Analytics to find out what they say about your audience.

Know Their Audience

When you’re looking for influencers you should also get to know their audience. Their audience should be the same as yours. The best way to find out about their audience is to observe the interactions they have with their audience. Plus, you can use online tools like FanPageKarma.com and others to find out about their audience. If they have a formal influencer program they likely have demographics listed on their website. So, try asking them.

Know Them

You don’t want to choose someone who is a direct competitor of yours no matter how popular they are. Instead, pick someone who promotes complementary products or services as you do. Plus, you want to be sure that they don’t promote things you’re against. If they share your values and your audience, they may be a great choice for you.

Ensure Their Style is Authentic

The worst influencer you could pick is someone who seems “fake” online. Even if they’re not actually fake if a lot of people think they’re fake it probably won’t work out in your favor. The way to discover this is to read the comments on their videos. Plus, research their name on YouTube to find out if anyone has made a video criticizing them. Place a Google Alert for their name so you can watch them for a while.

Don’t Be Too Concerned About Their Follower Numbers

You don’t want to go after only YouTubers who have big numbers of followers. Someone with 20K followers can still be an influencer if their audience matches yours. Also, they’ll cost a whole lot less. It’s a win-win, they get to make a little money while they grow their channel, you get in early, and get known by their audience as they grow. You do want to ensure some people are viewing their videos but if they’ve been growing steadily since starting, it will be fine if they have fewer followers and fewer viewers than a “famous” YouTube star.

Make an Offer

Once you’re sure that you’ve found the right one, put together an amazing offer for them before contacting them. Have a number in mind for your budget, but don’t tell them what it is yet. Tell them what you’ll give them in terms of product and help during the campaign and let them come back with a figure.

Make it Easy for Them

Do all the work developing the content for them so that they can just focus on using your product or talking about your product rather than having to do a lot of extra work. Provide links, provide prizes for their audience, give them free product, offer graphics or whatever else you need to offer for them so that they enjoy doing your promotion rather than feeling like it’s too much work. If it’s successful, they’ll want to do it again.

Additionally, create all the content with trackable links for each influencer you use so that you know who to credit the increased awareness or sales to. Because obviously if it works out for you, you’ll want them to do more promotions as their audience grows. When you get in early with someone who is going to become a big star you’ll likely get all the benefits of having a star on your team without having to break the bank.